


Anathema Creatures

by ukulele_villian



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, Dream Sharing, F/M, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Kylo Ren Needs a Hug, Kylo Ren is a dumbass in distress, Kylo loves his monster wife, Minor Violence, OCs ahead, Rey Needs A Hug, Rey is a dragon, Shapeshifting, is it sharing dreams when you gain power from them ?, magic and dream sharing, medieval meets magic and steam punk sorta
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-02-24
Updated: 2018-07-13
Packaged: 2019-03-23 06:21:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 9,954
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13781586
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ukulele_villian/pseuds/ukulele_villian
Summary: "I'm a dragon of sandstone, but turquoise too. My scales will never be as beautiful as those who came before me, but I captured you. I won. Goodness will win and whatever you did in life will be repaid."An AU where Rey is a dragon and Kylo Ren is a 'Prince'.





	1. Chapter 1

Rey knows Princes are characterized by vanity.

This one appears no different. He's chained to the rock, arms above his head, feet dangling a foot off the ground, crown falling over his brow. Rey waited till his companions were long gone.  
She now sits and watches his black, curly hair blow around in the wind.

Watching the precession of black hooded figures march the tall man to the cliff had been an experience in itself for her; his chains had clinked together as the leader of the group, a man in golden robes, kissed the Prince's forehead.

Rey's nose had wrinkled, if it weren't for the over cast sky then the sun would have been reflecting off of the ugly, yellow garment.

The gold, robed leader then ordered an orange haired man to read off the rites of a sacrifice.

As the black hooded figures then mounted their horses, and the gold robed one entered his carriage--the orange haired man stayed close to the prince and whispered to him something that warranted the prince straining forward against his chains in rage. Audible laughter could be heard from his antagonizer.

Rey had chuckled too; the Prince had no way to get the hair out of his face.

Now that they're gone, Rey sees her prey lower his head to his chest. She'd left him strung up, wanting to stay human for just a tad longer and hoping that the prince would wear himself out from tugging at the chains.

Maz had warned her that Princes scream and strain, but this one is calm. Odd, Rey thinks. Did she get a defective one ?

No time to consider that. Rey had let two hours pass after his companions left. It's getting dark, and others of her kind could come to challenge her for him.

The job is simple: take the sacrifice, go home, eat his dreams, then kill him. The cycle of dragons and royals completed in five months time.

Maz promised her that it wasn't gruesome or cruel. It was nature; the Princes left to the dragons were always there for crimes of extreme nature. Whomever she got would be disgusting, loathsome; a man of untold arrogance, luxury and opulence. For a pauper like her this was retribution if anything.

Too bad, her junk trader Plutt wasn't a sacrifice.

Rey takes stock of the Prince's golden crown. The metal alone could give a family food for months. "Wasteful villain," Rey thinks.

She lets her human form go, like letting a sheet fall from her shoulders.

Rey's wings unfurl into wide sails while she snaps her tail experimentally. A huff of smoke blows from her scaled lips. This body never feels good, but it feels accurate. Her human shape is safe and beautiful, but her truthful monstrous-persona is natural. Maz joked with her, calling her the little sand serpent, only she could get away with such a bold statement.

Rey soars from the cliff she's hidden behind to greet him; good presentation equals cooperation.

When she lands with a thud, the Prince's head whips forward from his chest. His rapid heart beat, and the way the man stills himself against the vertical stone disc, makes Rey pity him--but only a little.

Rey leers in front of him, she admits she enjoys watching the man's eyes widen; natural instinct muddles her human perception. He's shaking, but quiet. The Prince would be foreboding if Rey was in her false human-body, but in this form he is less than half her height. An elephant sized creature against one man.

"You are alone, little Prince." Rey makes her voice hold a deep rumble, she places emphasis on the word ‘alone’.

The dark haired man swallows and defiantly stares back. Rey had planned numerous opening speeches, but would have thought that could make him cower; The Prince defies her despite his disadvantage and vulnerable position.

Is he analyzing me ? Rey looks around, she could just take him now, get this over with. No, she needs him to cower. Why isn't he afraid ?

Rey stares back, head inches from his own. She sees her own elongated face and ram’s horns reflected in his brown eyes.  
When the Prince tries to duck his head against the rock, she puffs a plume of smoke at him. He coughs, and Rey takes the opportunity to lean further into his space.

"You shall pay for your crimes..." Rey murmurs, unsure if he had heard her first threat. The Prince coughs and returns to staring back at her, much to Rey's confusion.

His eyes are watering from the heat she emits, but he still refuses to play his role.

"You'll suffer as you have made others suffer !" Rey throws the insult, hoping he’ll finally act his part. She keeps the smoke billowing around them.

Then, the Prince gives her a small smirk. Rey can feel his heart's pitter-patter, like a mouse, but he shows no signs of submission.

"I could say the same soon for you," The Prince's smile is a small, pained, and controlled--but Rey feels a wave of unease while she stares at him.

She doesn't have time to react when the sound of the air being sliced reaches her. Rey's shoulder blooms in pain. A sea of arrows cascade like rain.

"You bastard !" She roars. They may have set a trap, but she won't be leaving without accomplishing her mission.

Rey slices the chains with her claws and watches the arrogant man fall to the ground. He quickly begins to roll away, having planned his escape from the start.

"Not today, coward !" Rey wraps her tail around the squirming wretch. The Prince beats against her tail and kicks to be released. "They set you as bait and didn't arm you, huh ?"

Another arrow hits Rey dangerously close to her eye. "Oh hells-" She quickly takes off as arrows continue whizzing past her.

As she makes her getaway, Rey hopes the Prince can't see her tears. Numerous arrows decorate her like a quiver.

When she glances back, she sees her captive's face is pale as the mountainside fades away and their altitude increases. Serves him right.


	2. Chapter 2

When the wizard, Palpatine the Deathless, roamed the earth with his dragon, Darth Vader the Unrelenting, he brought with him a legion of creatures not of life nor death.

That's what Rey hears from Poe and Finn. Constable Zuvio says it's cheap fairytale drivel, though. The walking beasts were not made of magic, but of iron hatches and steam.

Rey herself came to the conclusion that the answer lay somewhere in between, just like her home.

Her cave is infused to the metal of an old walking beast. She had prepared a domed bird cage for her captive in the open cavern space one floor below her nest, and a speech for him at his arrival, but the pain of arrows takes precedent, so she haphazardly throws him in.

The Prince lands with a hard thunk. He hisses when he lands on his arm, but quickly stands and runs for the door before Rey locks it.

A quick roar has him stumbling back to the other side of the cage and Rey leaving with an angry huff.

She flies to the other side of her crypt to get a look at her wounds. All the while praying that they're not so bad that she can't transform back to her human body.

The lagoon shows her what she can't bear to see. Rey plucks nearly every arrow, but the one embedded above her brow is deep. Brushing against the wall will aggravate it, trying to pluck it herself is extreme, and her magic requires that each wound be open for the archaic energy to enter.

The arrow is like a cork, and Rey's human mask is trapped in the impregnable bottle.

Rey weeps, what a fool she's been. If she transforms back, she'll surely die from an unhealed arrow wound to the head. But, the loss of being able to visit Finn, Maz and Niima village might kill her too. How will she eat ? She can't raid Teedo's farm, he'll die too if she takes another of his goats.

A metallic banging interrupts her lament. Oh, The Prince....The cause of her misery. She goes to him and notices he's taken one of the cow bones in his cage and is childishly banging it against the lock. She had meticulously placed bones and bird feathers into his prison to keep up appearances.

"That lock is charmed, only my command will undo it." Rey gloats, but the Prince is unperturbed. He whacks the bars and lock with strength and precision. "Where do you think you'll go ? My cave is high and a weakling like you will slip to his death. It's over. I won; you lost, little Prince."

"You're wrong, you filthy sand dragon," The Prince drops the bone and cocks his head to the side; his arrogance shining through, smoke unconsciously streams from Rey's lips. Maz was right, Princes are demons. "My men will soon come for me. They will storm this cavern and take what meager treasure you've been hoarding."

"Silence !" Rey marches straight to the cage. Control is in her favor, but he speaks boldly still.

"Ah, would it make you feel better to know that we weren't even after you?" Rey can't believe her ears. "That's right, the trap wasn't set for a half formed, sandstone runt."

Rey lunges for him through the bars. In an instant, she has his pretty little neck in between her fore thumb and index claw. "I'm a dragon of sandstone, but also turquoise. My scales will never be as beautiful as those who came before me, but I captured you. I won. Goodness will win and whatever you did in life will be repaid."

That is the role of dragon's and their captives. It had been like that for the dawn of time, the only one foolish enough to tarnish that role was Vader. But, even Vader realized his error, thanks to the wisdom of the monk, Skywalker, who slayed him--that's what the myths say.

"Prove it," The Prince gasps, his entire life rests in between her fingers, but he remains undaunted while he sputters for breath. This Prince is strange. This human being is not normal.

Rey grasps for an eloquent response. Before she can respond though, a sharp pain comes to her head and her vision blurs. She yelps and throws the Prince back, as if he burned her. The terror of raining arrows panics her and she nearly sets fire to the surrounding cave.

"You little-" She freezes. The arrow is gone.

There the Prince lays on the floor of his cell, the impact having knocked him out, with a bloodied arrow in his limp hand.

"You tricked me into getting close enough for you to use magic....?" He doesn't respond to Rey's comment. She deduces that he removed it with a summoning spell, but Princes don't have magic. Do they ? Can they ?

She lets the final wound heal so she can shrink back to her human form, crouching on the outside of the bars near him. Rey could eat one of his dreams now, it would be cruel after what he risked for her, but they've already broken so many rules.

It's not all her fault, she reasons. The sacrifice wasn't supposed to be a trap-- it was a judge, jury, and execution. She filled in the role of the righteous and he the damned. 

"Who's judging who ?" Rey whispers to the unconscious Prince.

Prince's lives cook beautiful dreams. The creamy delectability of a banquet, the savory power of a conquest, the rich hubris of life.

"You surely did this to hurt me," Rey reaches a hand through the bars and channels her magic at his temples. Maz had warned her, told her that the task was dangerous and weighed on the soul. 

She would have thought the rich fat of a Prince's dream would have immediately pulled her in, like a warm sauna of soup. No, it's like she's thrown into a raging ocean.

The sky pours water, a small village lays in flames, and the hooded figures from the cliff surround the Prince--no, he can't be a Prince here--the Knight. He must be a Knight.

His swords is enhanced but a spell of flame. Raindrops hit the blade but do nothing to extinguish the violence. Steam funnels off the blade as rain fails to calm the blaze.

Rey stumbles backwards. A village slaughter before her and at the helm: the man she brought into her home.

Rey rips herself from his mind with a start. She looks in horror at her prisoner, deceivingly harmless in sleep. He's curled up in the cage, face contorted to reflect his horrific dream.

"Oh what have I done...." Rey sets off to Maz. She's brought a wolf in sheep's clothing to her home. A Knight, a wielder of magic, and a Prince. By the gods how can one man hold so many faces ? He is a complete, disastrous trap.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wrote this really quickly and wanted to get it out of my system ! Thank you to everyone who has left reviews. I'm currently working on chapter three & chapter nine of Refined Sight. I hope to get both up in the next week. 
> 
> Thank you, guys :)


	3. Chapter 3

She arrives at Maz’s mirage hovel in a rainstorm. Nothing as dramatic as a rain to capture the weight of the mess Rey’s placed herself in. The cottage from the outside has a mud and hay roof and a vegetable garden; it’s an innocent front for a witch as old as the mountains. 

“Maz ! Maz, help me !” This isn’t the first time Rey’s slammed on her friend’s tiny door. 

“Child ! By the stars, I swear,” The door flies open and Rey runs into the house. All the while Maz is trying to remove Rey’s shawl and get her near the fire. Rey ducks past the miniscule, old woman and goes right to a brick and mortar wall in the home. “Little loth cat, where do you think you’re going that’s not in front of a warm fire ?! ”

Rey ignores Maz and pries away the loose brick to pull the black lever hidden in the wall. Rey leans her full arm into the concave, the chamber is deep and from the outside it looks like the wall has swallowed her whole arm. With scrambling fingers her hand brushes through fresh cobwebs in search of the switch. 

“Gods, Maz, why do you put so many spider webs over this thing ?” Rey yanks down on the latch when she feels the cold, cylindrical metal. She pulls her arm back and watches the bricks twist in elaborate shapes till it forms a staircase going down. 

“My dragon girl, why are you always leaking rain water all over my house and acting like a cyclone ? The library isn’t going anywhere.” Maz comes at her with a feather duster to whack at the cobwebs covering Rey’s arm. “Tell me what trouble you’ve flown into this time. This better be good, it takes a lot of magic to hold up this tower’s Glamour.”

Maz grabs at Rey’s hand and clasps intertwined fingers in her own. She only comes up to Rey’s waist, but her gaze is stern and her spectacles thick and knowing. Rey can--and has--endured interrogations from Unkar Plutt while he holds a fire poker and a band of thugs at his side. But, nothing can make her break quite like Maz’s concern. 

“I began The Draconian Nobility Exchange,” Rey sheepishly swings her hand in Maz’s as the shocked witch whacks her with a feather duster. “I thought I was ready…...” Maz sputters in disbelief.

“You must know you are ready, never think. Knowing is wisdom; ponderance is good, but-.” 

“But ponderance is fickle,” Rey finishes. “A fickle life leads to a thousand heartbreaks. I know, I know.” Rey says, reciting Maz’s words verbatim. Maz walks ahead of Rey into the hidden stairway, while making a ‘tsk’ noise in response. 

“If you can recite it. Why did you not follow it ?” The admonish hits Rey like the arrow from the little Prince’s entourage. 

The staircase illuminates as they pass each empty torch. Maz’s home breaths a welcoming whisper to Rey because it knows she has no fear of the darkness beyond the hidden tower.  
Maz had once invited her to live and stay in the secrecy of the magical castle. If only things could be so simple 

“Maz…...I think--I think the Prince I picked is a Witch….Maybe a Mage.”

Maz’s hand squeezes Rey’s painfully. Rey could be hanging from a cliff and the death grip would not fail. “Do not fear. I promise this will go quickly.”

“Maz, he’s a Knight too.”

“Oh you brave girl, why are you like this ?” 

Maz and Rey arrive in the castle’s hidden catacomb den. Maz keeps her whole world hidden in between thousands of years worth of texts and novellas. 

“Can I still perform the ritual with-” Rey can’t bear to say ‘him’. The Prince is not her partner; he’s a menace, and now an ingredient to a series of tasks that could grant her the power to aid her friends. “I want to do this Maz. I can’t stand aside while Finn and Poe are out there.” Castle Organa is failing, Niima Village is starving, and Rey has a tyrannical brat in her home. 

“You must child, letting him go puts you in harms way. I should have never told you of the ritual…..”

“Is there any way I can block him from beaconing to his comrades ?”

“You enchanted the lock on the prison ?” 

“Yes !” Rey conceals that despite the lock, The Prince had still used magic to remove the arrow. She touches her forehead consciously. Even in her human form, small horns protrude from her scalp. Brushing her fingers against them calms her, and they slowly begin to disappear. 

Maz narrows her eyes. “I’m going to give you chanterelle powder to put in his food. The Prince’s sleeps will last two moons longer and you can continue eating his dreams. You’ll need to move through this ritual as fast as you can if you truly want to help.” 

Rey follows Maz as she collects herbs and spices. “And I can eat any dreams ?”  
Maz stops in her tracks and Rey bumps into her back.

 

“They must be pleasant, beautiful, extravagant, rich and juicy.” Maz’s ominous voice fills Rey till she might as well be drowning. “My beautiful dragon, do not eat terrors, lest you should become them.” 

“Thank you, Maz…..” 

The mood lifts and Maz goes back to collecting materials for her. She sorts out a bundle of tools and trinkets that far exceed what Rey asked for. “Do you know The Prince’s name ?” Maz begins wrapping a tome alongside the concoction she’s produced. The Chanterelle medicine oozes a glowing purple inside the vial. Maz looks expectantly at Rey when her question goes unanswered.

“No, I don’t want to ask. I can’t afford to know him.” 

“Rey, what did you expect from dream eating ?” Maz’s faith in her is withering by the minute.  
  
“I’m sorry ! It’s our last hope-”

“When you discover his name, come back to me. I’m still fearful of this supposed man with multiple roles.” Maz hands her the wrapped goods in the same fashion a mother hands their child a sack of goods before sending them perilously off to war. 

“I am as unsure about him as I am myself,” Rey thinks. But instead of voicing her worry, she takes the gifts with a bow and heads back to her mountain.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Maz is the universal mom. 
> 
> Here's a short update. More is on the way soon. Thank you to everyone for having patience with me.


	4. Chapter 4

Rey crouches in front of the Prince’s prison, she had put many hours of magic into it, and as a result it had rendered looking like a bird’s cage. The top was rounded--as was the base. When it had finished being constructed, Rey had felt uneasy; the cage looked like it meant to capture a flying creature.

She’s waits in the full regalia of her dragon form for the Prince to awaken. The food inlaid with Maz’s concoction is hot and arranged on a plate for when he wakes up. Rey takes note of how he’d curled up while she was gone. He appears less like a Prince when he’s curled up like a centipede awaiting a crushing boot. 

Rey shifts her weight and wishes she had brought the book Maz had gifted her, the rest of her supplies is in her nest and room in a higher plane of the crypt. The spells took longer to read and the work was extensive. Rey had trained herself in arcana craft till Maz came into her life, but Rey found herself frequently going off pace with Maz. As a result, Rey spent many days practicing with only her own frustrated groans to keep her company. 

“Wake up !” Rey blows hot air towards The Prince, she suspects if the food gets cold he won’t eat it. She needs him in a deep slumber, not this shallow place he's resting in. If he awakens while she's channeling magic over him then the fragile rules of this game could be jeopardized. His eyes flutter open and he sits up to look around. He’s not shaking, but his gaze keep darting all around her cavern. “Have you forgotten where you are ?”

The Prince clenches his fists at his side and sits up straight. He gazes down at the food and quirks an eyebrow at her. “I’m surprised you’ll be feeding me at all.” He says, a hint of sarcasm in his voice. “Amazing that you could arrange the vegetables without burning them to a crisp.” 

“Shut up, “ Rey feels her stomach flip at the thought of starving someone. She’s not sure she could do that to anyone, not even Unkar Plutt. “Eat the damn food, brat.” She can’t admit to herself that eating his dreams is a worse fate than starving. 

The Prince continues examining the food. He picks up a turnip and runs a hand over it before turning back to Rey. “Where did you get chanterelle magics ?”

Rey curses the gods. Of course she plucked a Prince versed in some level of potions. “Chanterelle powders are illegal. I thought you would know that, little Prince.” Rey counters in an attempt to act casual. 

The strange man--The Prince or the whatever the hell he is--makes a non-committal ‘hm’ and bites into the food, making sure to never break eye contact with her. Rey has to keep herself from making a sound of disbelief.  
She deduces that he believes he’ll be able to withstand the powder and potion. He surely does not know Maz then. It’s a risky move for him in their cat and mouse game. 

Rey watches him sit with his arms folded in an attempt to look smug. For a moment Rey believes he has won, but the way his eyelids sink gives her hope. The Prince realizes it too. He maintains aloofness for a few more seconds before he grunts with dulled fury. He presses his hand to his forehead and squeezes.

Rey breathes in sharply. “Stop that !” She orders him; he’d been pressing on a bruise at his temple, using the pain to keep him awake. 

The Prince ignores her and beats his free fist into his abdomen. Rey doesn’t move to stop him, for a second she felt pity, but she keeps her resolve strong. He is a menace. When she looks into his dreams again that will prove it. 

The Prince’s punches to his side become less and less resolved, slowly down to a pathetic repetition. He closes his eyes and lets out a harsh sigh and mumbles something before he passes out. 

“You remind me of Rose when she drinks. She sleeps after a sip.” Rey is used to talking to herself aloud, the Prince’s head lulls to rest on his own shoulder in response. Rey wonders what snarky remark he would make back if he had heard her talking about her friends. Rey puts her human form back on over her dragon body, she finds it easier to channel magic while in this form. “Show me, Prince. Show me a terror or give me power in your former life’s pleasure.” 

Rey’s entrance to his mind is less than elegant. The brambles and thorns surrounding his innermost thoughts scratch and demand she turn back. Blind persistence pays off and Rey finds herself on a bridge over a chasm so great it might as well lead to hell.  
Wind is the elemental antagonizer of this dream instead of rain. The Prince is ahead of Rey on the narrow platform, all she can see is his back and an outline of another man in front of him. She holds onto the railing as the bridge tetters with a hint of motion

The wind howls and Rey is forced to rub her arms despite her living the events in secondhand, no moon or stars cover the night’s sky. There is no beautiful banquet to devour, nor an embrace of luxury. The Prince’s head supplies a vision of him in black robes with his own black curly hair bouncing in the wind. 

“Please,” The other man, the older one that Rey can only see by peering to the side of the bridge, pleads with The Prince. “Come home, my son.” 

Rey feels a spike of envy pierce her. To hear such earnesty, from a father no less, is unseen in her life. 

The man continues with his speech, moving closer to The Prince who begins to back away. “It has been many years--we miss you. Come back to us.” The words are simple, no flare or spectacle, but still pure and true.  
“It is too late.” The Prince’s tone is pained. Rey is shocked into a firm, contemplative silence that the howling wind fills.

“No,” The older man--the Prince’s father asserts. “Come home.”

“Will you help me ?” 

Rey hears the yearning in The Prince’s voice, it is completely different from the caustic tone she’s come to know him by. 

“I would do anything for you.” The Prince’s father moves toward his son and reaches for the hilt of a blade. The Prince holds it outward and for the briefest of moments Rey thinks this will go how she wants. 

A flash of lightning and thunder erupts. In the second it takes for Rey to scream she watches The Prince cut down his own flesh and blood.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Quick update ! I'm excited to get the ball rolling in the next chapter.


	5. Chapter 5

When Rey was a hatchling she still called herself a child. Her parents had left her with Unkar Plutt for safe keeping under the assumption that she was perfectly healthy, little girl. That changed when the horns came in. 

They were painful, but instantaneous. She thought the structures jutting from her each side of her temples were just figments of a nightmare, because the next day as she prepared to go looking for gear parts and cogs, they were gone. 

But Unkar Plutt had pushed her, and after a bad deal Rey had slammed her fist onto the kitchen table. Her teeth had barred and so had the horns. The anger dashed away her disguise and Plutt had pointed a meaty and angry finger at her, yelling that he would tell Tekka’s church followers about her and that the stake was next. 

Rey had run, despite Unkar yelling that he owned her and despite the hope that her family would return. How could they return for a demon ? Rey couldn’t believe that life could be anymore nightmarish than with Plutt, but she was wrong. 

Then Maz rescued her and Rey befriended a set of kind, but naive people. Finn the royal military strategist and Rose of the royal guard. Only Maz knew of her secret and any questions like, “How did you arrive to Castle Organa in such quick time ?” or “Rey why do you wear so many layers ? The sun is sweltering.” could be explained away and her friends miraculously believed her. She was peculiar in their minds, and since so many people are peculiar there was no room for further investigation. 

Rey reminds herself she is doing this all for them. She holds Maz’s loaned book above her head, arms extended forward so that the book shields her from the raindrops coming through a hole in the cave. Laying in her nest of furs and cloth on a rainy day with a book should be a treat. The Prince has ruined that too. 

The book drones about how chanterelle sleeping powders work best on apples and spinning wheels. 

“The turnip worked fine,” Rey talks to the book, her lone dialogue echoing around the cave. “He’s still asleep, even with the rain.” She vents to no one. She’d been avoiding the task after the last dream. How could the goodness of a father be extinguished so easily ? Why is it harder to destroy men like The Prince, and their kind fathers are the first to go ?

Rey glosses her hand over a series of paneled illustrations. The first shows a Mage and a young man on a stone dias, the next panel of a maiden chained to a rock. Above her a dragon is in mid roar. The illustration continues to the next page where the dragon is eating a balloon shape that Rey assumes represents the maiden’s memories and dreams. 

Rey thumbs through Maz’s book and grumbles. The pages go into grotesque detail, complete with gruesome diagrams of dragons devouring Prince’s and royals right out to obtain power, and Mages making deals with the dark side to become dragons-- but there is no mention of inedible dreams, time limits set by sieges to beloved castles, or a burning confusion over one’s captive. 

Rey rolls over and stares over the precipice of the ledge. Below her the Prince’s cage gets the same light plops of water leaking from the ceiling. Rey stares absentmindedly, she pulls out a trinket from one of her treasure piles, an automaton, and winds it up. Boredom the familiar friend amongst her. Her treasure isn’t worth much, books and tiny geared trinkets aren’t a boastful horde.  
If her Prince is right and his men do come to storm her home, then they’ll find something more on par with a humble cottage if anything. 

Finn and her had worked together to build many of the toys and games in her cavern. The rudimentary key winds up the toy and the soldier marches on undaunted. 

Rey sighs and throws the toy back into a pile of other beloved items. She swings down to the comatose fiend in a bird cage and preps herself for another terrible vision. 

“Try me, beast. What can't I eat today....” she leans over to his sleeping form. His hair covers his eyes and an irritating heat tinges Rey’s cheeks. A steady droplet of water falls upon his forehead and in his slumber he seems to flinch each time.

How dare a real monster look helpless when Rey is cursed to fighting horns and scales. “No more terrors, just what I need….” 

Rey closes her eyes and reaches her hand forward, he’s close enough to the bars that she could touch him. On instinct her hand covers his forehead from the steady onslaught of water droplets.

The cloying need to show kindness to this man rebels against the need to make him suffer for what she saw in his last dream.  
Rey rushes into his mind, trying to go further to the past without snaring upon recent memories. His past, she reasons, will be the beautiful dream she’s looking for. The more recent events are the aftermath of what happens when someone is raised with every luxury in the universe. 

A memory tugs at her heel, but Rey persists into the farther depths of him till she bumps into room, a cell really. Wet stone and a soft pitter patter puts the scene into focus. There is nothing else in the stone room besides a boy and a barred window.

It’s him, she thinks. But, she can’t tell. Rey can’t believe it. The boy before her is skinny and lanky like a sign post. His clothes are burlap, but his long dark hair proves to her that this boy is the man she has captive.  
He’s in the corner sitting with his legs pulls up to his chest and a hand reached out to feel the droplets of water that consistently come from the top of his leaky cell. His young face is soft, but his bandaged hands tell a different story. 

Rey’s stomach rolls while she watches him smile, a small and hidden gesture, at each drop that falls upon the palm of his hand leaving a damp spot on the white cloth wrapped around him. The feeling of small comforts is familiar in a lonely place. 

This isn’t a castle, if it is then it’s the castle’s dungeon. And this boy with bandaged hands doesn’t look like he could commit harm to anyone.  
Yet looks can be deceiving. Many thieves learn painful lessons when they target Rey on route from Niima. The surprise of pulling back her hood to see sprouting horns sends them stumbling. 

A hollow clacking from someone unlocking the cell's door gets both the boy and Rey’s attention. He moves to rest on his knees, hands placed together in prayer and eyes closed. He stumbles on his robes and shakily centers himself with his head bowed. 

“You were meant to be reflecting on your actions, young apprentice.” An older man, wearing a crystal pendant and followed by two other men, addresses the boy. The boy keeps his back turned, persistently pretending that he was in prayer. 

The leader of the elder men walks around to him and Rey can tell that if the boy’s eyes were open he would roll them in exasperation. 

“Have you come to understand your fault ?” 

The boy opens one eye, but remains in false prayer stature. “No,”

“Young man-”

“A Mage’s task is to protect. I should not be seeking forgiveness from the Gods for doing my job.” 

“You fought your fellow brothers, my child. Fighting your family is not the way of a Mage.”

The boy violently stands in frustration, throwing out a hand to illustrate his anger, “Then why am I not treated as such, Uncle !”

The room quivers with repressed magic. The boy flinches back when he sees the frightened looks from everyone in the room. “Forgive me, master. I did not mean-”

“I think some more time of reflection is needed.”

“N-No, please. Uncl- I mean master. Let me explain my actions.” The boy’s uncle in response holds up his hand in gentle reproach. The Uncle means to do well; Rey still feels confused in response to the condescending air of three adult men against one small boy. 

The boy’s uncle dresses as if he is the leader, and despite his status he looks to the two other men for council. Rey wrestles with curiosity, whatever the young Prince did must have been terrible. His display of unbridled anger proves he can do great feats of magic, but the elder’s total lack of discussion or dissection feels morally black and white; and as a result dangerous.

The elders deliberate for less than a minute. “Ben, we have decided to extend your time here.” 

Rey bites her lip. How can they ignore the total look of resignation spreading across The Prince’s--no--Ben’s face ? His name, the Prince has a name. He’s not a wicked Knight, he’s a person. He’s as human as they come and she knows what is happening is cruel despite their efforts to do what they view is right.

“I see,” Ben lost all of his fight in the face of being left in the cell. “I understand, master.”

Rey and Ben’s Uncle can tell he’s lying.


	6. Chapter 6

Rey watches him collect the debri in his cage and move it to a pile. He’s meticulous,sorting the bones by type and size, as if he’s making the most out of a prison by turning it into a home. 

“He must be good at that,” She internally reasons while observing him sit to rest. “He knows how to turn hell into a house.” 

Rey is unsure where she stands after witnessing his time as Mage. She knew of followers in magical faith who were strict, but to the point of cruelty felt more dragon like. To this day the threat of Plutt dragging her to Tekka’s followers is a fresh wound. 

Rey scans texts, searching for alternatives to power advancement. She catches him one night attempting to peer up and over the ledges of her second story, and recluses herself further away as a precaution. 

After that, she begins watching him too. 

Rey looks to Ben--her little Prince, the one fate gave her--go through the motions of meditation, listless contemplation, testing the strength of the cage, channeling repressed magic, sleeping, and then sometimes when she appears in the cavern he stares right back at her. They each play a game of stare off, waiting to see who will give in. 

She hates the way his eyes focus, unblinking--challenging her. The neutral calm in the expression infuriates because it confirms her suspicions; he is a beast, but not a monster. Eventually Ben is the one who will concede in their stare offs, looking down and rubbing his neck. Like he is ashamed to be caught.

Rey bides her time, hoping a letter will come from Castle Organa. 

When a raven finally does arrive with news of a continued battle, instead of a victory, Rey uncharacteristically burns the response in her shaking, human hands. She always saves Leia’s letters, but this one invokes so much ire, it burns to a crisp too easily. Her dragon form uncurls and she stomps to a ledge overlooking the outside valleys and caverns. Rain continues outside in constant stream.

The Prince’s cage is ten feet away. Rey feels him analyzing her from afar. Does he wonder where her rage stems from ? Or is he looking for a way to demean her. 

“Please don’t mock me today; I’m not sure what I’ll do if I lose control.” Rey knows exactly what she’ll do. It’s a terrible mess of ripped pillows, and her beloved trinkets turning to dust in her hands.

The Prince is silent, sitting against the bars of his cage with his legs folded. Rey waits for a sarcastic jab, but he obliges and remains quite. 

“May I ask a question of you, Dragon ?” In true royal fashion his inquiry sounds like it ends with a period. There’s uncomfortable, rule breaking territory they enter if they act as two peers. Rey thinks to say no; it’s what Maz would tell her to do. 

“What can you give me in return ?” Rey turns, this same man was once a boy and held his hand out to catch the rain from his leaking cell’s ceiling. 

“Not very much; you could let me out and there would be more,” He tempts. Rey’s seen his magic. Even in the confines of the cage that serves to clip his wings he’s able to gather up enough to frighten her at times. Could it be enough to call to his men ? 

“No,” Rey turns away. “You think I’m stupid.”

“You could ask me a question in return,” He suggests. Rey pauses, having been certain a second prior, she now feels the familiar tendrils of curiosity. “It’s all I can offer while I am in here.”

“What is your aim little Prince ?” Rey asks him point blank, and he bites the inside of his cheek.

“Is that your question for me ?”

“Is that your question for me ?” Rey mimics, proving to him she can be clever too. His face turns red and he ducks for a second with his hand rubbing the back of his neck, a nervous tick breaking his facade of stoic behavior. 

“My aim is to fill the hours with anything other than--” he motions disdainfully at the monotone stone and rocks in her cavern of bones and bird feathers, “...All of this. Your lack of treasure is unconventional.” 

Rey rolls her eyes. The Prince is a disheveled captive and still haughty. His crown by each day looks more tarnished. “Maybe I don’t keep my treasures in the same room as my garbage, little Prince.” Her real treasures are in her nest a level above where she keeps him. He’d scoff at them, anyway. Cogs, gears, and automatons are more precious than gold or silver. 

“If you were brave enough to begin killing me, then I’d have no cause for complaint.” He fires back so quickly and bitterly that Rey could believe their roles reversed--a princely dragon and a magic user.  
“Yes, I know about your aim. You’d have turned me to stew if this were common. You’re here to eat my dreams, and yet my mind and body remain intact.” He grabs at his own chest, illustrating to himself and her the disbelief in being unharmed when he knows she’s been searching his dreams--but not eating them. 

Rey is left speechless. He’s deduced everything, mostly on assumption, but he’s had two weeks of on and off coma to consider this.

“Now I ask you a question,” He calms himself, having realized he laid his frustrations and motivations completely bare to her. “Why haven’t you started the Draconian Exchange ?”

Rey grows bewildered with the man’s audacity. He yelled at her and now asks for her help, “I’m not telling you anything !”

“I helped heal your wound, that must be worth an answer at least !” 

Rey clicks her claws. She knew he could never be only kind. Kindness from him only comes in exchange for something, never nothing was the law of Princes and the world. Whatever troubled boy she had seen in his dreams was dead and replaced with this annoying man. 

Rey puffs a cloud of smoke. If she can keep clicking her claws and scare him long enough to come up with an excuse she will. She decides on half the truth instead, “You have no happy memories.”

This takes the Prince aback, the realization was a slap. He looks contemplative for a moment, his face squished into maintaining aloofness. The Prince--once known as Ben-- turns away to gather himself and Rey curses how her throat closes guiltily. 

“So you’re lying in wait for the opportune time to strike.”

“No, I’m-” Rey cuts herself off at the heels of her words. She started this mess for Finn, Leia, Poe--all of her friends. “I’m hoping for circumstances to change.” If Castle Organa could fight off the siege on their own then she could hypothetically let him go. Hypothetically if he wasn’t awful he wouldn’t return to have his revenge. 

“Pray these ‘circumstances’ change quickly,” He slinks back away from the bars, away from her. “My memories on the other hand will not.” 

They continue their games for another week. The rain does not stop, the news from castle Organa goes quiet, and Rey worries her claws to nubs. The Prince finally removes his crown and sets it to the side, his cape has become his makeshift blanket, and the fluff in his hair has become messy and unkempt. 

He’d been very, ‘done-up’ when she had snatched him. Now his princely attire has become more childish costume.

He’ll ask things of her, simple things. The Prince gave up asking about The Draconian Exchange--now his thoughts veer to the borderline of mundane. 

The Prince asks about how she learned magic, why she has books (he caught a glimpse of them on the shelf of the second floor), and how she coaxes the ravens and crows to come into the caverns. The questions are harmless enough that she’ll gift a response; anything is better than the worrying and rain. 

But when she searches his dreams again all she can find are burning villages. He’s thrown up a wall somewhere in his mind. His dreams locked into repetition to distract from the things she saw of a young man. 

She confronts him after two weeks of silence from her friends, “Why did you hate him ?” He looks shaken and then the dawning realization cascades on him. 

“I didn’t hate him.” The Prince does not falter, nor does he stammer, but he’s gone stiff and pale.

“Then why-”

“Why what ?”

“Why did you kill your father, I don’t understand.” In her dragon form she can somewhat hide her envious and confused tears.The Prince in her midst is annoying, but almost harmless at times. How could he have gone so far ?

“I believe you do understand,” The Prince walks right to the bars, holds onto them to face her. “You continue on with this ritual, despite the pain it brings you and the waste of power. For who you work and act-- I do not know--but you take the path of sacrifice.”

Rey is shocked, he is clever, but not clever enough to have guessed that a part of her hesitates because of him.

“Then you know that I have to go through with this.”

“And you know that my men will come for me soon.”

Silence reigns between them before the Prince speaks up again, “But it does not have to be this way.”

Rey’s curiosity wrestles with caution, “Whatever you’re offering,the answer is no.”

The Prince approaches the bars. His lip quivers for a second and he becomes beseeching. “You’re one of the few Dragons I’ve known who can do magics outside of your sphere of influence. You wouldn’t have to hide in this cave of garbage. I could bring you back with me-”

“No,” Rey’s hisses. Dragons have coaxed her to join them, these barters always lead to bad ends. “I will not join your posse of knights.”

“You would have a worthwhile life, whomever you serve right now-”

“I serve no one !” She doesn’t work for Leia Organa, they’re her family. 

The Prince swallows, confusion all over his face. He turns away from her, to re-think or to sulk. Rey is unsure of which--but she knows what she’ll be doing--stopping these games and beginning to find a way to save everyone she’s ever cared for.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here is a short chapter. Big thanks for all the support on this indulgent pet project.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a really short chapter, but I felt it best to end here for a number of reasons to do with pacing. Thank you guys for all the great reviews and feed back on this story.

They both waited for his knights. Rain came and went, but no messages from Castle Organa. Rey sat on an edge, hiding in her human form skimming each spell page quickly. Rummaging through older books, just looking for some way to reverse the mess of the castle siege and a band of warriors who could be coming any day. She couldn’t walk around her own home and was forced to either wait for messages in dragon form, or hide as a human girl in the upper levels.

She had once needed to fight, before her horns had grown out. Squabbling through piles of war wreckage, armor, flags, and ruffians--that had been her life before the pieces of her puzzle took shape. Now, if any rogue dared grab at her they paid dearly.

There had been so many of them the day she had taken Ben. Arrows, the leader wearing gold, the red-haired and finely dressed man; could she fight all of it ?

“No,” she reasoned internally. “You’re attempting to gain more strength because you can barely protect your friends.”

An even darker thought strikes her. If she sided with The Prince and his gang could they stop the siege ? Rey feels the fleeting and childish hope flutter around in her chest before she spears it with cold logic. The man is still a haughty Prince with a group of village destroying knights--knights who have an explicit goal of killing her--his request for her to join him is a blunt ploy to chain her to a cause. They’ll use her for everything she’s worth.

The Prince still goads at her, but always ceases when she spits back at him.

“You mumble to yourself,” he pointed out one day. He then changed the subject somehow sensing her embarrassment. “I’ve hardly seen you leave this place.”

Rey ignored him and continued on with her business of waiting for word from the castle.

Then one day the Prince stopped wearing his crown. He sets it aside, an object that lost all value when no one could squabble at his feet. Then he stopped fighting the sleeping dust in his food.

He began looking expectantly to the cavern’s entrance over every little noise, attempting to maintain his elegance despite how eagerly he awaits rescue.

“They’ll be back someday,” Rey had once told Maz. Maz had shaken her head in response.

She wonders if the little Prince tells himself the same thing.  
  


Rey resolves to end the emotional tug of war by the end of the next day--she’ll eat one of his dreams no matter good, bad, or despicable. It will warp her, and she takes this knowledge with clenched fists digging into Maz’s spellbook.

But, nature takes the helm of her fate. Snow comes after the rain, and a frost freezes the moisture sticking to the stalactites. Cold winds blow snow over the plains outside her home keeping her hidden inside, she’d stocked food for an emergency like this.

“Do you know why the seasons run strangely ?” The Prince asks her, his breath coming out in steam. He’s more of her now, breath coming out in clouds similar to her own steam and smoke.

Rey responds instantly, “Palpatine The Deathless scrambled them. He wanted to control kingdoms with eternal winters,” Maz and Leia had told Rey tales of differing sources with the same ending. Rey had done her own reading as well, once again finding the answer lying somewhere in between. After Palpatine’s death the seasons returned to a fragile normalcy.

“Don’t look so shocked that I know, little Prince.”

The Prince pushes a cloud of air from his lips. His typical exasperation coloring his face which is fainter than it normal, “You should know of Palpatine. Dragons once loved him.”

“I don’t feel anything for a dead man or his legacy,” Rey notices the restrained shiver in Ben. “You’re cold ?”

“This is brisk. It is not cold.” He maintains that he’s unperturbed, lying moreso to himself than to Rey. His stilted sentences reveal as much.

“I’ll bring water from my hot springs for you,” Rey goes through five excuses in her mind as The Prince eyes her with suspicion. “I need you alive.” He doesn’t believe her.

She leaves him, resolute to go back to preparing to actually consume his dreams. The more she talks to him the harder this will be.

The wind increases, it howls through her cavern and whistles. During the night Rey flips between her human and dragon form. Rolling around her nest as the chill spreads. No light permeates the caverns and when Rey sits as a human girl the darkness sits thick and stiff around her.

“Little Prince ?” Rey calls over the ledge. Her nest is full of pillows and blankets mended, a bed for a dragon and a girl, it’s circular like a nest and furnished like a bed. She could bring him some. He’ll surely scoff and call it menial, despite having once lived ascetic as a Mage. “Ben ? Are you there ?”

Rey’s voice echos around the caverns. It’s too dark for him to see her as she is, but she sheds her human disguise so that he can’t piece together that her voice sounds different. She climbs down to his cage, lighting a torch nearby.

Rey gasps when she sees him; he’s an unhealthy shade of pale, forehead slick with feverish sweat, and curled into a fetal ball. She can’t tell how cold her cavern is, her body is that of a magical fire that fears not frost nor chill.

He is a powerful Mage and Prince--a Knight too--but a human man as well.

“Little Prince- I- I’m sorry !” She opens the cage hastily, using magic to unlock it verbally. If she can warm him up he may still live. Ben murmurs protests in his delirium, flinching and crying out when she scoops him up with her mouth to sling him onto her back.

Rey takes him back up to her nest, laying him down and bundling him up all the while he talks in his sleep and illness. She can’t make out all that he’s saying, but she does hear one phrase that brings back a thousand wounds from the past: “Come back. Please, come back.”

After that, any hesitation to save him evaporates. He’s a patricidal fiend, but she won’t let him die this way. Out of the cage he could use his magic to harm her, but in this state he is a pathetic, mumbling wretch.

Rey covers him with her wing, she can hold her true form for him. He’ll be safe under her wing.


	8. Chapter 8

She dreams. 

No

This is his dream. Rey is sitting across from Ben, he’s the Prince in this narrative. Same age as she knows him in the present, dark eyes and saddened face. There is no natural light breaking through the stone built room that the past is set in.  
There are only warm candles that cast shadows on the Prince’s half grimace. Each flicker of the candle highlights his youth and weariness. 

“You’re one of our best, Phasma told me so.” Ben looks directly at Rey in this vision. She senses that she fulfills the role of another. That theory isn’t proven till someone else's words exit her lips.

“Please, let me go.” Ben’s face breaks character at the sound of begging, then he magically pulls himself into stillness. His unreadable expression puts off the person Rey is inhabiting. “I must flee this place before it eats me whole.”

“You know I’ve maintained blindness for you. But, I can’t ignore treason.” 

The person she inhabits lets resolution and determination burn through their fear. And with those feelings, the dream then shifts.  
Rey watches now as a bystander. The room is a large amphitheatre the color of crimson. The same eerie glow of light feebly traces shadows and shapes onto Ben as he kneels before a shrouded figure. 

Rey recognizes the figure instantly, it’s the wealthy and powerful figure that left The Prince as bait.

“You let him go ?” The golden robed man is more imposing when Rey faces him from this close proximity. His voice is aged and knowing, but not kind in the same way Maz’s voice is aged and wise.  
Last she saw Ben’s Lord and leader, he was too far away and unimportant when chaining her Prince to the rock. 

Ben fidgets under his lord’s detached gaze. “His defection is of no consequence.”

The man, or the creature, lets the air simmer with ambiguity. Rey sees the pleasure he’s deriving from watching the beads of sweat that accumulate near her Prince’s brow. If this weren’t a dream Rey could put this distorted sadist in his place. Anyone who gains this much joy from watching someone cower is evil. 

Rey’s known men like this. Unkar Plutt had ironically warned her, never considering that he was one of them. She’d assumed Ben was cut from the same cloth--the memory before her is making her doubt. 

The Prince’s master finally speaks, “You are correct; the soldier’s defection is meaningless in the face of what I have.” Ben keeps his eyes glued to the stone floor. Relief is a balm on the fear in him. “What is more worrisome is what I must do with you.” 

Ben’s hope is snuffed out. He snaps his head upward, pleading with a master whom he adores. “Lord Snoke, I am forever loyal-”

“Enough !” Snoke waves his hand. Ben is lifted into the air, dark magic pushing upon his chest till his eyes look like they’ll pop from the pressure squeezing him. Rey knows he won’t die. But is surviving through this any better ? “You are spoiled, compassionate, and exploitable.”

“Yes, Lord Snoke.” Ben gasps out, the pressure increases in response. Rey acutely feels everything, the overwhelming horror show makes the room spin. She’s being crushed alongside him. The air is leaving their lungs and-

Rey wakes with a startle, still in her true form as a dragoness. Faint rays from the newly risen sun dance around cold air, and snowflakes that have snuck their way into her cavern land utop her nose before melting. 

She panics and lifts her wing to check on Ben. He’s curled up, less pale, but still unconscious. She hadn’t intentionally gone to eat a dream, it was as if the dreams had come for her.  
Rey experimentally huffs warm smoke around him, watching his eye lashes momentary flutter. 

“Can you hear me ?” She prods at his form with her snout. He rolls about in response, but remains feverish and uncoordinated. “You have all this power...but you can’t even help yourself.”

In one universe he is powerful, respected, has knights and probably ladies in waiting who swoon all over him (the last thought makes her a tad jealous). But here, when he is ill he is just a human.  
Could his existence be any different from herself ? This constant hiding and shifting between two equally similar Rey’s, dragon and human. Prince and Ben. Knight and Ben. Mage and Ben. Mage and Rey. Rey and Dragon.

She decides to take him down to her springs, even if paranoia shrieks at her not to. She’s lived for nineteen hard earned years, and dying due to an act of naive kindness is not the path she wants. And yet she hoists him over her scaly shoulder, and maneuvers carefully so not to hurt him. 

Finn loved telling the story of Rey rescuing the blue jays. The birds were a nuisance, loud, and cruel. But Rey had taken it upon herself to bring them in from a storm. Of course the birds had then refused to leave the barn, a fact that Finn jovially would highlight. 

Rey muses that the situation she is in, as she sets Ben down beside the banks of the cave spring, isn’t too different from the blue jays.

Moving him with her jaws is tricky, his human skin is too delicate and she hears faint murmurs and whines from Ben everytime she shifts him. Worse is the realization she can’t just dunk him in. 

“It’s the cold that’s making my hands shake,” Rey talks to herself, now as a human. She’s acting as a stupid human, so might as well take on that form and hastily undress him as best she can. He whines as she lifts his cloak and shirt over his head. “You have so many damn clothes, and somehow still you can’t keep yourself warm.” 

Rey stops at his pants. No, she’ll leave those on. His chest is already bare and is well muscled despite its many scars. There’s something genuine about seeing him covered in battle memories. He’s vulnerable, but not weak. 

He’s a survivor. He’s another survivor, like you.

Rey lets her hands hover around his breasts, then stops, and drags him to a shallow bank in the water. Maz is out there somewhere probably shaking her head at Rey’s lack of self control. Curiosity is what will get her soon killed. 

There's steam coming off the surface of the hot spring, making the scenario Rey’s in seem almost dreamlike. She stares at his peaceful boyish form and doesn’t dwell too much on the boundaries she’s crossed. 

Rey doesn’t even notice his eyes flicker briefly when she pulls him back to the water’s shore.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So far I've outlined the next few chapters of this fic and the ending. Big thanks to everyone who has stuck with me and my strange update schedules + my other works !

**Author's Note:**

> Here I go again. While this won't update as frequently as Refined Sight, I promise to try and keep it on schedule.


End file.
